Skills: Reproduction vs Morale

Depends how you're playing.

If you like sending lots of transports to capture other planets then pop growth can be a huge bonus. Lets you get those fully loaded transports out faster. In early stages of many games I find myself waiting for my pop to increase enough to launch a transport (even at 100% moral). Pop growth is linked to moral though, so +20% pop growth is useless if your planet moral is 49%.

Paul.

~SDC~

"P.S. With the full version, will the devs be releasing the formulas?"

If you look in the online Encyclopedia you will see documents by Brad that explain things like how morale works, how economy works, various caps, etc.. These documents don't give detailed formulas but are very informative and will cover what you are asking now and what you will undoubtedly be asking next.

~SDC~

The economics of GC aplies basic valid accounting methods, no cheats. One of the challenges of GC is to "discover" these. Check out the economics write-up.


~SDC~

Heh...I've already read them. I guess I'm kind of disappointed at how much information is left out.

I.E. It's not mentioned anywhere that your colonies stop "growing" at 50% morale.

- Nobody

From my experience, population is very tricky, because of it's impact on morale, unless the planet production can support that level of population.
Planet production capacity is very progressive. Social projects, research and starbases will improve production, but require quite a few years to build up.

At times you may want to slow your population progression, in other words create a 50% morale, because you dont have the production to support larger population.

The propulation growth reduced due to 50% morale, is either in one of the older post or in the "dog-gone" undocuments tidbits...
http://www.galciv.com/encyclopedia.asp?action=showpage&page=http://www.galciv.com/docs/undocs.html


~SDC~

Here's something I've found...A relationship...

At the initial 33% tax rate, with no bonuses, the "population" grows by roughly 6% (with a downward trend) per turn. When morale falls below 98% morale, the "population" growth rate falls to 3% (with a downward trend). When morale drops to 50%, the "population" growth rate falls almost to 0%.

This trend occurs on class 18, 19, and 20 planets. The only difference is where they transition to the next level.

Increasing morale extends the growth intervals. (You stay at 6% longer.) Increasing pop growth increases the growth rate at given intervals. (You grow more than 6% in the 6% range.)

Tax income is based on both the population and planet class alone (excluding skills). The class provides an offset (a bonus, if you will), while the population provides the actual data. At a given population level, size 18, 19, and 20 planets will transition to the next income level.

- Nobody

One thing I found...

I didn't see anything to indicate that the "real" population of a planet was saved in a savegame. The reported population is, however.

This makes me wonder if the game internally ignores the "real" population and just derives everything from the reported population.

- Nobody

You have put in a lot of work on this.
I think I undestand where you are going with this.
I have not worked out these numbers as they are too volatile due to other variables such as tax rate and sending rate, and I have not worked those out either.

My challenge is to match as close as possible the optimization curve of the underlying formula, by managing the play variables.

I guess you could plug some data to further your performance, but would'nt that be defeating the purpose of the game.

I have played sufficient games to get a "feel" for the curves. If I would do these calculations, my game would take twice as much time. A galaxie sized at bright level,takes me about 40h, that is a long time.

From a strategy perspective, I usually go for a technology or cultural conquest. For those, population is not as important compared to military conquest as you dont have to invade.
I avoid going for the research or social that will increase my population, to avoid a morale problem.

Good luck....

~SDC~

To me, this kind of research is fun. It's a puzzle. I'm figuring out all the rules. It's not for everyone, though...

I will be posting more data soon. I have a program that extracts my planetary data for use in Excel, and this should speed up my research time.

- Nobody

I see someone else has been reverse-engineering the savegame files as well

My math is too rusty to formulate intelligently the supporting Model.
If you get there, let me know.

FreeCell is another game that I can see the pattern, but can't formulate.

~SDC~

Heh... FreeCell's a bit tricky. You have to eliminate several degrees of freedom to get the number-crunching down. My bot is on a winning streak of about 100000 games

From the looks of it, gameplay in GalCiv isn't nearly as sensitive to maths-driven optimization as Stars! is... thank goodness.

~SDC~